While we're thinking about how to deal with quacks advertising their fraudulent wares, some government department has started commerical promotion of ayurvedic and unani systems of medicine on television.
These are telecast on various private channels.
Sorry, I can't find any video clips of the same.http://www.ccimindia.org/#

There is very little that the government of India does right, but that is a topic for another thread.

I have said elsewhere on this forum that one of the biggest contributors for the popularity of homeopathy and ayurveda is the way medicine is practiced in India. There are so many greedy and incompetent doctors that sometimes seeing a quack doctor is better than seeing one who has a degree in medicine. But like Ajita, I too have no idea on how this situation can be bettered.

Nice video. Here are some related links from my bookmarks, which I employ whenever someone tries sell me the natural-vs.-synthetic line. The upshot of it is, many drugs are in fact "natural" in origin - by which I mean they were first found in plants. The active ingredient is nonetheless a chemical. This chemical was then studied for decades, and improved upon but so-called synthetic processes. So the whole natural-vs.-synthetic argument is in fact a false dichotomy.

(19-May-2010, 10:05 PM)Lije Wrote: There is very little that the government of India does right, but that is a topic for another thread.

I have said elsewhere on this forum that one of the biggest contributors for the popularity of homeopathy and ayurveda is the way medicine is practiced in India. There are so many greedy and incompetent doctors that sometimes seeing a quack doctor is better than seeing one who has a degree in medicine. But like Ajita, I too have no idea on how this situation can be bettered.

I agree that malpractice by qualified doctors is one of the main reasons that even the educated who can afford good medical service get lured by the promises of alternative healing systems like, ayurveda, unani, accupuncture, etc. People also can't resist the "no side effects" and "cure without surgery".
One important reason that maybe the government is promoting these practitioners is the shortage of doctors in India. The suburbs of even metro cities have a large number of these ayurveda practitioners masquerading as general practitioners of medicine and they write prescriptions for "allopathic" medicine though they're not licensed to do so. I've recently moved to a semi-rural place and the best doctor there has a BAMS degree (ayurveda) but he dispenses allopathy drugs and people don't check his qualifications or they don't know the difference.

Allopathy lessons to be kept out of ayurveda, siddha
Pushpa Narayan, TNN, Aug 17, 2010, 02.29am IST
CHENNAI: Two weeks after a Madras high court ruling allowing practitioners of Indian medicine to conduct surgeries and prescribe allopathic medicines, the apex medical university in Tamil Nadu has decided to revamp the syllabus for courses in Indian medicine and remove all allopathic content from them. The university's decision follows a backlash from the Indian Medical Association and allopathic practitioners in the wake of the judgment.

The HC order was partly based on the argument that siddha and ayurveda doctors are taught to carry out surgeries since their curriculum includes anatomy, physiotherapy and modern pharmacology. Tamil Nadu Dr MGR Medical Universityvice chancellor Dr Mayilvahanan Natarajan told TOI that the syllabus for courses in Indian medicine would therefore be revised to avoid the overlap between the traditional and modern streams of medicine and that the university would also challenge the judgment by the single HC judge.

Dr Natarajan has now asked the board of studies for siddha, ayurveda and unani to revise the syllabus and exclude all allopathic contents for undergraduate and postgraduate courses. While the vice-chancellor hopes to introduce the revised syllabus by next year, there is likely to be opposition from the associations of practitioners of Indian medicine. They have said they would approach the varsity pro-chancellor and health minister MRK Panneerselvam, and chancellor and state governor Surjit Singh Barnala to stall the efforts.

Dr Mayilvahanan told TOI, "In some streams of Indian medicine, students learn more than what is taught in MBBS courses, but they don't read it in depth. Now, the board of studies is revamping the syllabus. It will introduce elements of research into the streams and delete allopathic medicine. We intend to update the syllabus with recent advancements in their own streams, like new drugs and treatment methods," he said.

Wow thanks for the link Swati, this sounds crazy....Naresh Trehan is a leading heart surgeon in the country. Do his beliefs make him foolish?? Or is this just another business model with a USP ? Placebo?

"The Medanta hospital in Gurgaon claims to offer the very best in modern medicine, but for all that, it has a stark anachronism in its lobby: two floor-to-ceiling ‘Trees of Life’ in latticework, to which well-wishers tie strings as they pray for the quick recovery of patients. It’s a scene one would normally associate with dargahs rather than modern hospitals. Actually, this is quite in character with Medanta, where, in a unique experiment, cutting-edge medicine is being used in conjunction with traditional Indian healing and practices like yoga, meditation, ayurveda and even, it would seem, the power of prayer. Doctors at Medanta say they have seen patients recover faster than they do with modern medicine alone.

The idea, says Naresh Trehan, cardiac surgeon and chairman of Medanta hospital, is to combine the powers of modern and traditional medicine. “The former attacks the disease from the outside, while the latter acts from the inside by strengthening the body to fight it,” he says. “It’s like combining the powers of the army and the air force.” The hospital routinely uses ayurveda to complement the allopathic management of Parkinson’s disease and lifestyle-related diseases like high cholesterol levels and hypertension."